Something that captures the mood of the moment. The ear, if not the imagination, of a legislative session.

Last year it was "living will." Or, depending on your take on the Terri Schiavo case, perhaps it was "judicial tyranny."

This year, it may be "transparency."

That word has been surfacing a lot in Tallahassee. Unfortunately, it's not coming from the Capitol.

It's become the favored word of Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho, who's become a lightning rod for concerns about electronic voting machines.
...
Now, it's already bad enough to consider that our voting systems can be corrupted by a sharp eighth grader who might be able to access an elections office.

Think of what a savvy, committed adult could do.

As Mr. De La Cruz writes for a South Florida paper, and includes his email address and phone number at the bottom of his column, perhaps a few of you may wish to thank him for his coverage of Ion's story, and suggest to him that he cover Clint Curtis' story in a future column as well.

After all, in Curtis' affidavit, he says he was told that the vote-rigging prototype Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) asked him to create was meant "to control the vote in South Florida."

While we're on the topic, please remember that Curtis is now running for Congress against Feeney and his massive DeLay/Abramoff/Top-Tier-GOP Money Machine and your support is needed if he is to stand a chance of beating Feeney in the very "conservative" district which Feeney carved out for himself when he was Florida House Speaker. See below for more details on how you can help him take on one of Congress' most corrupt Friends-of-the-Bushes...

"They filed their complaint on October 11, 2002 alleging that: (1) the use of unreliable, deficient voting equipment, including the punch card ballot, in some Ohio counties but not other counties violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; (2) the use of error prone voting equipment deprives voters of their due process right to have their votes counted accurately; and (3) the use of punch card voting systems in Hamilton, Montgomery, and Summit Counties has a disparate impact on African-American voters in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965." (see post #1 for a link to the case)

We know this one is going either to the en banc 6th Circuit or on to the US Supreme Court.

But there is now serious talk of defective electronic voting machines being bad for democracy and being unconstitutional.

The New Hampshire phone-jamming scandal is going to be like Watergate. But, here is the point the MSM is not promoting: The fact that the Republican party f***ed New Hampshire voters and Firemen, who were driving people to the polls to vote. What party would do such a thing? The Republican Party! That's who! Preying on people who need rides to the polls. What is their agenda? "How can we use the fact that they are poor or elderly or need a ride to vote??? Hmmmm.... I GOT IT! Let's jam the phone lines of the volunteers who are giving these people rides to the polls!!!"

This is how Republicans think. "How can we F**K the poor and the elderly???"

Now here it is, proven in a court of law, that the Republicans did this. And the stupid Dems are not capitalizing on this.

Naturally, Blomberg presents this as "it depends on which way you look at it"... bullshit. They say, the Republicans call it an isolated incident (some "other" people did it, right? Not the Republicans!).

Instead of saying, "A court of law, and 99% of the people in this country think this is a despicable act by a cowardly party, preying on the poor & elderly, trying to disenfranchise them...using their $$$ to screw the poor & elderly."

NO! Blomberg presents it like, well, "it depends on which party your from, if it's bad."

A smart eighth grader could swing a Florida election. And a smart eighth grader could swing an Ohio election.

But it takes more to persuade the people who had the election swung against them to take it lying down. Which is what the Democrats have done.

It takes more than a smart eighth grader to persuade the mainstream (corporate) media to acquiesce in the fraud by stifling all evidence and seeking standard political reasons for Bush's winning two elections he actually lost.

It takes more than a smart eighth grader to proclaim election fraud in foreign countries, based largely on exit polls that contradicted the official findings, yet to ignore exit polls that proved that Kerry won the election.

It takes a worship of the status quo, and a willingness to put up with an ignoramus like Bush in the White House, rather than acknowledge that the United States can't run an honest election.

and yet....when you call your local election officials they continue to stick up for the fraudable crap they've purchased. But it's not Diebold they say...as I say 'all' are bad without a voter verifable auditable paper receipt....oh no we do backup it's secure....HELP THEY REFUSE TO SEE THE LIGHT!

Ada,
I agree we need a voter verifiable auditable paper receipt. But Savantster pointed out to me on another thread that such a paper counting system is not allowed by law in states that have gone to electronic voting systems. So we need to get the law changed in those states.

My Florida county has used the optical scan paper ballot system for many years since before 2000. I like it because your paper ballot is kept by the officals for a hand re-count if necessary. I would like it even better if it gave me a receipt of my vote that can not be forged.

Dan,
I read more on BlackBoxVoting.org and also later when I was going back to it I accidently typed in .com instead of .org and saw a different site. Apparently the .com site's owner used to work with the .org's site owner but they split ways under bad circumstances that I don't know the details of.

Anyway, I am convinced that Brad's efforts (and that of your friends here) for a better voting system are a good one.